In my last year in Glasgow I was part of a bible-read-through group with a bunch of other pastors from various churches in the West End. It really was one of, if not the, highlight of that final year and an experience which I will forever be grateful for. Amongst many reasons one thing I loved about it was that – for me at least, the discipline of regular reading and reflection on scripture is something that is helped greatly when it is done (albeit not literally) as part of a community with whom we can then talk about what it is that has particularly struck, encouraged, or challenged us.
One of the ways in which God often surprises me (although perhaps given that it is a fairly regular occurrence I should stop being so surprised by it!) is that although I’m reading something which I have covered before, that as I read through the bible things strike me in a way that seems like it’s the first time I’ve ever set eyes on it. This is exactly what happened to me yesterday and is what I want to share with you today:
I was reading in Deuteronomy (chapters 8-11) in which Moses is basically recapping some of what God has been doing in the life of the people of Israel since bringing them out of Egypt. In 10:1-2 Moses is recounting what God asked him to do after he had broken the first set of tablets on which the ten commandments had been written: “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain. Also make a wooden chest. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Then you are to put them in the chest.”
Now I know that I have read this before, and yet something struck me as if I hadn’t: “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones…” And the reason why this impacted me is that I had somehow allowed myself to think that Moses went up the mountain where God gave him the already engraved tablets, as opposed to Moses preparing the tablets, and God doing the engraving. And whilst some might scoff that I had allowed myself to think in error all this time (despite having read it!), and whilst others might think something along the lines of: “What’s the difference?!”, it struck me so forcefully because it reveals once again the fact that Almighty God – the Creator of everything; the King of Heaven – has a plan by which He reveals Himself to humanity and yet He partners with us – or in this case, with Moses, in bringing that plan to pass.
And as I read that yesterday I was both challenged and encouraged and excited at the idea that perhaps, as He did with Moses, there is something that God is asking us to join with Him in. Because, as we thought about on Sunday, God surprises us: He takes an old couple and from them brings a nation; He takes a spoilt brat and from him saves a people; He takes a stuttering murderer and uses him to lead his people out of slavery – I could go on. But the common theme again and again? God. Uses. People.
God. Uses. Us.
Are you up for being used…?
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